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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,488

In January 2,020 at the event where General Motors automated driving division Cruise took the wraps off the Origin robotaxi, a slide briefly appeared in the presentation showing a version of the vehicle for package deliveries. Today during the General Motors investor day, Cruise CEO Dan Ammann provided more details about the company’s business model and revenue opportunities and showed both a delivery module and a wheelchair accessible version.

Cruise has been providing automated deliveries in partnership with Walmart WMT +0.7% in the Phoenix area since late 2020. Throughout much of last year during the worst early phases of the pandemic in the San Francisco area, Cruise vehicles were used to provide more than 50,000 food deliveries to medical personnel and those in need. Those efforts have all utilized the current test fleet of Chevrolet Bolts which are not optimized for goods delivery.

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There’s a lot of excitement at the intersection of artificial intelligence and health care. AI has already been used to improve disease treatment and detection, discover promising new drugs, identify links between genes and diseases, and more.

By analyzing large datasets and finding patterns, virtually any new algorithm has the potential to help patients — AI researchers just need access to the right data to train and test those algorithms. Hospitals, understandably, are hesitant to share sensitive patient information with research teams. When they do share data, it’s difficult to verify that researchers are only using the data they need and deleting it after they’re done.

Secure AI Labs (SAIL) is addressing those problems with a technology that lets AI algorithms run on encrypted datasets that never leave the data owner’s system. Health care organizations can control how their datasets are used, while researchers can protect the confidentiality of their models and search queries. Neither party needs to see the data or the model to collaborate.

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With almost instant improvement.

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco Health has successfully treated a patient with severe depression by targeting the specific brain circuit involved in depressive brain patterns and resetting them thanks to a new proof-of-concept intervention.

Even though it centers around one patient, the groundbreaking study, which has now been published in Nature Medicine, is an important step toward bringing neuroscience advances and the treatment of psychiatric disorders, potentially helping millions of people who suffer from depression.

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Based on Transformers, our new architecture advances genetic research by improving the ability to predict how DNA sequence influences gene expression.

When the Human Genome Project succeeded in mapping the DNA sequence of the human genome, the international research community were excited by the opportunity to better understand the genetic instructions that influence human health and development. DNA carries the genetic information that determines everything from eye colour to susceptibility to certain diseases and disorders. The roughly 20,000 sections of DNA in the human body known as genes contain instructions about the amino acid sequence of proteins, which perform numerous essential functions in our cells. Yet these genes make up less than 2% of the genome. The remaining base pairs — which account for 98% of the 3 billion “letters” in the genome — are called “non-coding” and contain less well-understood instructions about when and where genes should be produced or expressed in the human body.

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University of Kentucky College of Medicine researchers were part of a new study that gives insight into how limb development evolved in vertebrates.

The findings, published in Current Biology Oct. 4 identify a gene that plays a central role in the evolution of limb development in vertebrates. By manipulating this gene in mice, researchers were able to activate an ancestral form of limb development seen in early tetrapods (four-legged vertebrates).

In the limbs of all tetrapods, the bones on the hands and feet on the outside edge form first, known as postaxial development. The study focuses on , which are the only exception to this rule: their limb bones develop preaxially, or from the inside edge; the thumb before pinky.

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Human Factors, Ethical Artificial Intelligence, And Healthy Aging — Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan, PhD, Head of User Research, AI, Ethics & Society, Microsoft Cloud+AI.

Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan, Ph.D. is Head of User Research for AI, Ethics & Society, at Microsoft’s Cloud+AI organization, where she works at the intersection of user research, ethics, and product experience.

In her current role, Dr. Sethumadhavan is focused on the Microsoft AI ethical principles (privacy and consent, fairness, inclusion, accountability, and transparency) as it relates to various Microsoft AI experiences.

Dr. Sethumadhavan is a seasoned research leader, with two decades of experience studying human-technology interaction, and during the course of her career, she has led user research for several novel and complex applications (e.g., Microsoft’s custom neural voice, facial recognition), as well as at Medtronic, where she provided human factors leadership to multiple products in the Cardiac Rhythm and Heart Failure portfolio, including the world’s smallest pacemaker. She has also spent several years investigating the implications of automation on air traffic controller performance and situation awareness.

Dr. Sethumadhavan is also a Fellow at the World Economic Forum, where she is working on unlocking opportunities for positive impact with AI to address the needs of the aging population.

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“Much to our happy surprise, the rheumatoid arthritis totally disappeared in animals that received a vaccine,” says Chakravarti. “Sometimes there is no better way than serendipity. We happened to hit a wrong result, but it turned out to be the best result. Those kinds of scientific discoveries are very important in this field.”

Researchers from the University of Toledo have discovered a prospective new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. The vaccine-based treatment strategy proved successful in preliminary animal studies and the researchers are looking to conduct more clinical trials in the future.

The research hinges around a protein called 14−3−3 zeta. Ritu Chakravarti, lead author on the new study, has been studying 14−3−3 zeta for several years due to its suspected role in a number of autoimmune conditions.

The initial hypothesis was this protein played a significant role in the onset of rheumatoid arthritis. If it was triggering the disease then knocking out the gene in arthritis mouse models should prevent the condition arising in the first place.

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“In the preliminary data … there is a suspicion of an increased risk of heart inflammation, when vaccinated with Moderna,” the Danish Health Authority said in a statement.

It referred to data from a yet unpublished Nordic study, which would now be sent to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for further assessment. Final data was expected within a month, it added.

Sweden and Denmark said they now recommended the Comirnaty vaccine, from Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE.N), 0 instead.

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“Our study is the first to discover that stimulation of the FFAR2 sensing mechanism by these microbial metabolites (SCFAs) can be beneficial in protecting brain cells against toxic accumulation of the amyloid-beta (Aβ) protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” said principal investigator Hariom Yadav, PhD, professor of neurosurgery and brain repair at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, where he directs the USF Center for Microbiome Research.

Fenchol, a natural compound abundant in some plants including basil, can help protect the brain against Alzheimer’s disease pathology, a preclinical study led by University of South Florida Health (USF Health) researchers suggests.

The new study published Oct. 5 in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, discovered a sensing mechanism associated with the gut microbiome that explains how fenchol reduces neurotoxicity in the Alzheimer’s brain.

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Get ready for the future of mobility.

The world is moving to electric vehicles (EVs), but we are still rolling on vehicle concepts meant for heavy internal combustion engines. Challenging the very concept of what a mobility solution should look like is the Ryzr, from new players in the EV market, R.

As the pandemic pushed people to opt for more independent mobility solutions, bicycle sales rocketed in many parts of the world, the BBC reported last year. With its open concept, R’s Ryzr is designed to offer the same thrill as cycling does on open streets but with a more relaxed car-like seating comfort.

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